Cisco & IBM: A-Rod & Derek Jeter of Tech?

Major League Baseball has Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez — intensely competitive players who were close friends until one of them dissed the other in the media. And as luck (also known as a shipload of Steinbucks) would have it, the two ended up on the same team, the New York Yankees. So for the sake of appearance they get along.

We believe IBM is hedging its position against a more aggressive Cisco. The company now has Networking OEM relationships with both Juniper and Brocade, while it still maintains a reselling agreement with Cisco. In our view, IBM is expanding all of its options.

UBS is being polite. The fact is that this battle is only going to get ugly. With Hewlett-Packard (s HPQ) and IBM on the offensive, Cisco is going to find itself in a very cold place. A surefire sign of impending ugliness is when companies try to spin us. In this case we’ve gotten emails from Cisco’s press people with links to press releases and blogposts on the company’s web site explaining how Cisco and IBM are working closely together.

This diplomatic spin reminds me of Derek Jeter and A-Rod’s relationship. In 1997, DJ admitted to being “Alex’s biggest fan.” Ten years later, A-Rod said, “People start assuming that things are a lot worse than what they are, which they’re not. But they’re obviously not as great as they used to be. We were like blood brothers.”

The kids have a word for those in these types of relationships: frenemies.

PS: The big question is, who is A-Rod and who is DJ? Grrrr…life and its complicated queries!

If we are gonna stick with this pairing IBM has got to be Jeter and Cisco A-Rod. Just ask yourself which company is more likely to hit the clubs with Madonna… and which one would do commercials for antiperspirant and classy watches.

Then there is the whole ‘roids question… do we think Cisco would test positive?